Mr. Speaker, I suppose in the law of extensions, my father is a farmer. I grew up on a farm and we grew grain. I do not know if I will be asked to recuse myself from the vote as well.
However, the reality is that it does not make any sense to me or to anybody else who holds any value in owning their own personal property. The principle that people can take all of the risk in investing in their crop, machinery and purchasing the land and, at the end of the day, if they happen to grow wheat or barley, they can be subjugated to when they can sell their wheat, to whom and for what price makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. What we are providing is an opportunity for those farmers who wish to collectively pool and try to negotiate a better price through that pool, using the talented people at the Wheat Board who wish to stay on in its new form, but we need to allow those individual farmers who want to make those marketing choices for themselves to do so.
I have constituents in my riding who went to jail over this issue. This is a ballot box question in the constituency of Wetaskiwin and I can assure members that I did not lose a single poll in the rural portion of the riding.